I have spent 38 years of my life trying to figure out the paranormal. I have studied spirits, and communicated with them. I have dealt with spirits at haunt cases that seem to always have a reason for their interactions with the living. I have collected thousands of EVPS and taken notes in order to try and come to some conclusions. I have learned a lot but still have even more questions than I started with. I pay attention to the details that might offer some information about the big things and the small things regarding spirits and what comes after this life. People ask me all kinds of questions too, and some I can answer, some I cannot. One thing that seems to come up on many of my cases and also has been posed by other researchers is “Do spirits retain their sense of humor?” Well therein lays a tale, as they say.

I hear ghost hunters say time and time again that spirits curse them out, tell them to “get out” and receive their attempts at communication with contempt or malice. They tend to take this personally and immediately deem the spirit as hostile, evil, demonic etc. To me this is ridiculous. Spirits used to be people and still are in many ways. They often resent being bothered by people prying into their world, especially people who think they are somehow entitled to all the answers that they desire or demand. Ah, but that is so human isn’t it? We are a spoiled and demanding bunch aren’t we? I too have been cursed out at times and told to leave, give up etc. until I make my agenda and my intent clear, then the evps seem to change to something more akin to civil and sometimes even congenial communication. Unless of course they are hostile, which does happen on occasion?

Some spirits seem to be serious all the time and cannot take a joke either. Then again how many researchers try telling them a joke? I did and the spirit got very annoyed with me, on that particular occasion. They do not like being laughed at either.At one of our cases a spirit was trying very hard to scare us. Wendy, my team mate and I were outside and the spirit knocked an SD card out of Wendy’s hand as she went to hand it to me. We both started laughing hysterically at the stupidity of that little ghost trick. Realizing that there was dog poop in the grass that we now had to search through in the dark we laughed even more at the irony of our situation. On the tape recorder that was running the whole time you can hear the spirits total disbelief and annoyance with us because we were in hysterics. Now these ghosts were up to no good and resented not getting the reaction they were used to. I have found that even benevolent spirits sometimes get real mad when we laugh at something going on or being said at the time of the sitting. I truly think this is because they have to expend so much energy to interact, that they are taking it very seriously. They don’t want to waste time with humor and frivolous talk; they want to get their point across and their message through. Often when spirits reach out to us, it is because they feel the need to tell us something important. They have a limited window of opportunity, and also a limited amount of energy in order to do it. Other spirits are coming forward because they are angry or wanting to chastise the living for something they feel is wrong or putting them in danger. In all of these cases it makes sense for the spirit to be impatient, curt and to the point,. They sometimes even seem to get frustrated when we cannot understand them or are not getting the message.

I cannot tell you how many EVPS I have where the spirits are asking us to be quiet, so they can talk, or to listen to them and be quiet. Here are just a few:

There are spirits though those do take the time to joke around or make us laugh. I have had this happen often enough to say that humor is alive and well on the other side. Even more telling are the comments they make with each other when they do not think we are listening but the tape recorder is. They have made fun of the team members, me included. They have commented on clothes, hair, attitudes, you name it. They also seem to be able to read our thoughts, as they will exploit whatever you are afraid of or whatever they can at times, to let you know they are fully aware of what you are doing or thinking. They seem to be able to watch and see everything we do and can be eager to point out what we did wrong, outing us to the other people present in the room, listening to the evp session. If the spirit does not like someone they take a wicked pleasure in telling on them or outing their secrets just as the living would.

Spirits have given evps to make their loved ones laugh and to set them at ease, in some of my cases. I once had a deceased Dad who wanted to let his kids know it was him so he joked around about something he did in life. The kids were taken with music and the life story of “Tupac”, and when he was alive the Dad was truly sick of it. He did not share their interest and wanted them to focus on something more wholesome. When one of his sons asked during the evp session, “Who are you?” the spirit answered in a loud and kind of sarcastic tone….. “Tupac!” The entire family started laughing, though I did not get the joke. They then explained to me that they now knew the spirit was their dad and why. I laughed too at that point. We then had a very comforting and session with their Dad’s spirit. I can say with no reservations whatsoever that sarcasm survives death too.

I truly believe that after we pass into the next realm, we are evolving once again and rise to another level of understanding and perception. The spirits who are in that world are now ahead of us in many ways. For this reason I feel that they may get bored or frustrated with us during communication attempts the same way we do with a child who is not on our level. You cannot have a truly enlightening conversation with a kindergartner like you can with a fellow college peer now can you? I have seen enough to say that I think that also plays into the spirits seemingly lack of interest in our questions or their lack of tolerance for our immaturity and limited understanding on a spiritual scale. They get annoyed when you ask about things that we believe now in this life but the spirits now know not to be true or even important in the big scheme of things.

When we participated in the national evp project we learned a bit about just how different our perception is here in the physical verses the spirit’s perception there on the other side. When we asked the question “Doe time exist for you?” ,we did not get an answer per say but instead, we got a reply with the inflection of a question saying : “Time?” It was as if they had no idea what we were talking about or the concept was no longer relevant. We got this same response from three different spirits in three locations. When I have asked different spirits how old they were, they have responded saying “That doesn’t matter” or “that is not important.” You can ask them when they died and get the same “It is not important” response. Again it seems that time is a concept that only the living seem to be concerned with or consider such an important part of our reality. Maybe that is because in this world, we consider our lives to be “mortal” so time matters to us, because we think it is limited to this life. We think we only have this life to get everything done that we want to do. I think this in itself may be the critical factor in our obsession and concern with “time.” We mark time because we think the clock will eventually run out.

Another thing that does not seem to be important to them is their name. They will call us by our given names but when we ask for their name, they often just ignore the question. Occasionally one will give their name from their human life but not many seem to be forthcoming with it. I have had one spirit say “I don’t remember.” Are names also not important on the other side? Is it because once you are a psychic being communicating psychically you no longer need a moniker to be recognized? This also seems to rely on how long the person has been on the other side. People who have passed recently seem to offer up their names. Maybe we do forget them once we no longer need them or have been in the next world for a while. Animals have no problem communicating and socializing in their pack without names. A name is a very human concept, again. Animals only have names once we give them names. It is a learned custom they adopt when living with us, to please us, it seems.

Taking all of this into consideration I do believe that humor survives into the afterlife but the spirits just don’t have time for it during the tenuous time allotted for them to communicate with us. They would rather focus on the serious messages they want to convey. Just to share one humorous moment with you, let me tell you about my friend Sam. Sam passed back in 98 and he was my best friend ever. When a friend and I sat down with the tape recorder to talk to him we asked a classic question. We asked “What do you miss most from this life?” Now of course I was hoping to hear that he missed us right? Nope, Sam being the same wise guy he was in life said “Chicken.” Now chicken wings were Sam’s favorite food to eat, and this made us laugh. So yes humor survives physical death and so does love. On this humorous note I will leave this essay.